


Some Days

by eloquentelegance



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:11:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4360937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquentelegance/pseuds/eloquentelegance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a certain kind of grief, when you leave behind the only home you ever knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Days

**Author's Note:**

> I'm here for a loving Talia, just like fyi.

There are some days. Some days, it feels like missing a step going down the stairs, like putting the wrong shoes on the wrong feet, like all the furniture got moved just an inch to the left. Some days, it feels like the sky is the wrong color, or the air feels too thin, something off about the very space he stands in. Some days, it’s a hurt, like his chest is caving in, like there’s an open, sucking hole between his lungs, a hollow, pulsing ache right where he can’t reach. 

Damian never thought he would miss the island.

It’s the days when the sun is out, when the air hangs thick and bloated, when he only has to close his eyes. He can almost believe he’s back at the compound. He could hear the waves crashing, the birds chittering, the faint and faraway sounds of new initiates training. He could smell the wet heat of the leaves, the sharp spray of the sea, the cinnamon and the cardamon wafting slow and sweet from the kitchens. Then, a car would honk or Grayson would call his name, and Damian finds himself in Gotham again.

He finds life in Gotham infinitely more preferable. It’s challenging here. He can exercise the full breadth of his talents - he tells anyone asking. Privately, he admits to enjoying the company. Grayson and Pennyworth prove to be tolerable at times. But of course, he will never say so out loud, though he has the sinking suspicion they already know.

Still, despite Gotham being better in most aspects, it isn’t as if his time on the island was completely terrible. No matter what reservations Grayson or Pennyworth may have about his upbringing, Damian does have a few, good memories of his mother’s - that is to say, Talia’s care. 

He misses the nights, after a hard day’s work, when she sneaks into his room and sings him lullabies. She always comes randomly, between the dead of night and the break of day, but never when he is awake. So he pretends to be fast asleep. She probably thought it a selfish indulgence to do so, that to be so tender while he was awake would surely encourage weakness within him. If it did, well it was his and her secret to keep.

More often than he is comfortable with, Damian finds himself missing other things, certain things from the island. He misses Ravi, misses hearing him pray throughout the day. He misses his low, raspy voice reading verse from the Quran as he rests between training sessions. He loved listening to the stories, even if it felt odd to hear teachings of peace in between bouts of violence. He suspects Ravi was doing so on the sly but then, he can hardly believe anything would pass moth - Talia’s discerning gaze.

And he finds himself missing Goliath terribly. He misses the afternoons when he was afforded free hour, when he harnessed Goliath, and they flew circles around the island. Swinging between rooftops simply couldn’t compare to the wind whipping through his hair, the sun steady on his neck, and the clouds at his fingertips. 

Grayson boasts of flying, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know of soaring, of urging Goliath to go faster, of the breath and the shout stolen from his throat by the rushing gales. It takes everything out of Damian not to speak of Grayson’s ignorance. He can’t afford to explain Goliath and the circumstances of his acquisition. The imposed silence only fuels Damian’s longing, curling his fingers and tensing his shoulders. The criminals of Gotham are never happy during his bouts of homesickness.

And that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Loathe as he was to admit it, even to himself, but he was indeed homesick. He’s not supposed to, he thinks, miss a place that did so wrong by him. No one said so to his face but he can tell everyone thinks it. The “obscene indoctrination”, according to his father. His family, and yes, this was his family now. Not Talia or Ravi or Goliath. This was his family, here in Gotham. No one else. And his family doesn’t think too kindly on the island and his childhood. But…

Damian takes a deep breath, relishing the humidity like a second skin, feeling as if the island was just an inch closer.

It wasn’t all bad. It would be easier, he thinks, if it was. If there was nothing salvageable about his childhood and being an al Ghul. But it wasn’t all bad.

He wonders if that makes him a terrible son.

**Author's Note:**

> i guess what im here for is for damian to miss talia, to miss certain things about his childhood, because even if he learned a horrible or a cruel philosophy, or as stern or as unyielding as talia was in raising him
> 
> he was very much loved. and i think damian is a keen enough child, a smart enough child to know that even if he wasnt raised in a loving or relatively free environment, he was loved. very very dearly.
> 
> and so he doesnt miss killing people or the army of fanatics who killed themselves on his word.
> 
> but he misses how the food is prepared, the smell of the sea, the way the sunset looks from the beach. i want him to be given the freedom to miss certain things from this place he called his home for the first apparently ten years of his life. and more importantly, i want him to miss talia. i want him to miss his mother. 
> 
> because it’s no less than any child should be given freedom to do, especially considering his father’s notorious past.
> 
> because talia is his mother. that means something. and not just because of blood or whatever but because she did honestly, actively loves him - even if the things she taught were cruel or her philosophy was unforgiving. and i know damian is very aware of that.
> 
> and i just - everyone talks down or talk bad about how damian raised, the things he was encouraged to do under talia’s care. and damian learns many things about the worldview he internalized is wrong. but i still want to give him that space, that freedom to miss his childhood home.
> 
> because it wasnt all bad. it would be so easy for him if it was. but no, he’ll say - remembering the touch of talia’s fingers through his hair or maybe her warm, proud smile over even the smallest of things. it wasnt all bad.


End file.
